True Rebellions
by yas-m
Summary: A loss of another friend may be too much to handle. Set in a world where they never got rescued. Jack/Kate.


**Title:** True Rebellions

**Summary:** A loss of another friend may be too much to handle. Set in a world where they never got rescued. Jack/Kate.

**Rating:** T (talk of sex and death and some bad language)

To all my amazing readers, who put up with my slow updates and my nagging about RL, you all are amazing.

**True Rebellions**

He shuts his eyes tight, swallowing a choking sob, and starts to mumble _time of death_ before he realizes he is in a blue tarp makeshift tent and the nurses by his side are a fugitive (who fails to hide her fear of blood and needles every time she hisses and turns her head to the side, shedding her usual bravado and wearing an unfamiliar shade of vulnerability) and a nursing Korean housewife (who has come out of her shy, timid shell to be the stern, tough woman who has protected the camp with a rifle and hunting knife more times than any of them could remember). He takes a deep breath, listening to the silence in the tent give way to the deafening downpour on the beach, and then leaves quietly, welcoming the slapping, whipping rain against his tired back.

She follows him (as he knew she would) and finally catches up to him when he is leaning against a heavy boulder in a bright green clearing (he wonders what excuse she used with Sun to make it out of the tent so quickly but everyone knows by now – there are no secrets when you are leaving mere feet from one another). She walks up towards him, stopping inches away from where he stood, her small body soaked from the torrential flood, and her wet, jungle green eyes stare up at him (she does not say anything but he hears a lot). She does not move, neither does he, maintaining the smallest distance between them.

_Are you ok? _she thinks to herself, but she knows it is the stupidest question to ask (especially now, especially to him). Her eyes travel across his body (his dark shirt clings to his sculpted chest and she bites her lip despite herself), she notices his hands, shaking, still covered with Sayid's blood, and a small object twirling between his calloused fingers. Her brow knots in confusion when she recognizes it (she never knew he smokes).

_We need to give him a proper burial, _he whispers, coaxing her attention back to his face. _Of course_, she says (when did they ever not give any of their dead a proper burial).

He reads her thoughts (she has always been an open book when it came to him), _no, I mean, a proper Islamic burial… Sayid is… was a Muslim_, he explains. She nods her head bobbing tiredly against her chest as she wonders what that means. _So no cross on his grave_, Jack says, still flirting with the cigarette between his fingers, _and there is a script he gave me once and asked that we read_ (he remembers teasing Sayid when he explained it to him, telling him it was too early planning their funerals just yet. They had thought they were safe then. Sayid had always been the realist).

Her eyes travel back towards the unfamiliar object between his fingers (it is just surreal to see it there) and his gaze follows. He offers it to her silently and she shakes her head in refusal. _I don't smoke_, she says dryly. _Neither do I_, he replies (but he brings it up to his lips nonetheless). She sighs (she always sighs) and crosses her arms across her chest (she always crosses her arms) and leans against the boulder next to him (it's wet and slippery, but they do not seem to care that the rain has not stopped). He lights it and takes a long drag (it makes him sick and it is exactly what he needs right now).

She watches him pinch the bridge of his nose; rub his temple and then the back of his neck. She knows what he is thinking (she always knows what he is thinking). _It's not your fault,_ she whispers soothingly. He scoffs (he does not agree), _yes, Kate, it is my fault_, he says. (Why does he have to be so God damn stubborn) _Of course he blames himself,_ she thinks to herself, _he blames himself for all the ones before him, why should Sayid be any different?_

_No, Jack it is not, _she argues back (she always argues back), _just like it was not your fault with Joanna or Boone or Shannon or Ana Lucia or Libby or Charlie or Michael or any of the others,_ she keeps that last part to herself. She watches him lift the cigarette back to his lips (she cannot help but be jealous of the wrapped nicotine).

_The first time I smoked _(tried to smoke he mentally corrects himself)… _I was thirteen and Marc Silverman stole a pack from his dad's girlfriend_, he speaks wistfully.

_Teenage rebellions_, she says.

_Something like that_, he says. He did get caught. It got him a month's grounding and doing his father's filing for another three months. He was not the wildest of rebels. His shirt was always tucked in, his hair neatly parted and his homework done before supper (but he is too embarrassed to tell her that).

_I smoked a cigar at my graduation party, _he adds (his father had scorned him, saying he might put an end to his medical career right then if he was planning to throw his life away so cheaply. He had said that as he took swig after swig from his scotch). He was not much of a rebel as an adult either (unless getting tattoos in a dark alley in Phuket counts as rebellion).

_What about you?_ He asks timidly (Kate's teenage rebellions a topic too tempting yet too elusive).

She reaches between them, stealing the cigarette from between his fingers, shuddering at the feel of Sayid's drying blood, and brings it to her lips (it is Jack's turn to feel jealous). _I thought you said you don't smoke_, he says.

_I don't,_ she says plainly. He suddenly yearns for the lost warmth between his fingers and needs the cigarette back (he would prefer the warmth of her fingers between his). He takes it back after she coughs on her second drag and her arms are crossed again (she is cold but she would never admit). She watches him as his eyes close shut (the pain of losing one of his best friends over taking his entire being).

_Sawyer did say it might come in handy one day_, he says, his eyes still closed as he twists the burning stub between his fingers (Jack had won it off him in a game of poker a few weeks ago, a game in which Sawyer tried to cheat despite the disadvantage of playing with one hand, his preferred left had to be chopped off a couple of months before).

Kate wonders if smoking was something Jack resorted to after losing patients back … (back home? back in the real world? There is no proper term for it any more, is there?) She wonders what else he would have done to numb the pain. Would he have had a drink (a heavy because such pain could not disappear with a light beer)? Or would he have used something stronger (more numbing. He was a doctor after all. He must know all the proper drugs)? Would he have sort comfort out of another human being (a colleague, a friend)? A girlfriend? Or could it be that all Jack would have needed was a mindless fuck with the first willing nurse?

He takes one last dissatisfied puff (cigarettes never were strong enough) and drop the burning end on the ground (he hears a thousand cries of environmentalists in the back of his head but they can shut up for now) and sighs. He thinks back to the numerous nameless, faceless women that would throw themselves at him back home at a time like this (every girls wants a broken man to fix). Young nurses, eager interns and administrative personnel in short skirts and high heels. He wonders how Kate would react if he told her about them. He wonders how he would react if he told her that (even though he resisted most of the time) he was not always strong enough to push them away, that there were times when a strange face smiled bashfully at him in the hall the next morning.

_Disappointing huh?_ She asks as he stomps at the butt angrily. I guess my father was right, he says dejectedly (again). She presses closer against him (it never stopped raining) and turns her upper body slightly (awkwardly as it always is between them). Her left arm is squished between them but her right is free to land on his chest (wet and heaving. From the rain or the proximity she will never know). Her fingers grasp the wet fabric tightly and her blunt nails scratch through it and burn the skin below. He is so much taller than her (or she is so much shorter than him, either way she feels protected by it) so she has to pull him down towards her (and now his upper body is twisted painfully).

She wonders if a cigarette would be enough if it were her in the makeshift surgery tent. He is staring at her (sad brown eyes begging her silently), waiting for her to make the move because even though it is he who needs this, he knows she wants to be in control. It is not about what he needs, it is about what she wants to give him (every girls wants a broken man to fix).

She finally ends his misery and closes the gap between them (there will always be a gap between them). She tastes the nicotine first and it makes her sick but she does not pull back. She waits till that initial taste subsides and is replaced with a taste she craves, a taste she yearns for, a taste she desires at the risk of madness. She waits because beneath it all is the taste of him.

He lets her kiss him, lets her take control because he does not care who takes charge. He wants her to take over. Wants him to control what she has to offer because only then is he free (of anything, of everything). He smiles into the kiss despite the gloom that haunts him because he finally has it, the one thing the teenager in him never had (she is his one true rebellion).


End file.
